| |
––––––––
WHEN I WOKE THE NEXT day, it took me a moment to remember where I was.
I lifted my head from the plush hotel pillow, furrowed my brow, and looked around. What was I doing here, again? I could remember booking into a place for the night after I had come from Nadia’s...
Yes, that was it. I had come from Nadia’s, and I had known without a shadow of a doubt that I wasn’t going to be able to let her go just like that. I had decided to stay in Miami a little longer, to ensure she was safe, to make certain everything was going to be okay. She probably thought I was back in New York by now, but little did she know I was still here, still waiting for her, still praying that she would make that call for me and tell me what I wanted to hear.
The roses had been a last-gasp resort, an attempt for me to get what I wanted out of her – a chance to speak, without her just hanging up on me or not answering at all. Our meeting the night before hadn’t exactly gone the way I had expected it would, but I could handle that – I just needed to come at this with renewed energy, and make sure that Nadia and her father understood how serious this was.
Well. Her father already did. The way he had spoken to me outside that apartment, I could tell he was scared right down to his bones about everything that was happening, and I couldn’t say I blamed him. He had probably seen more than Nadia had over the years, seen enough that he knew what he was dealing with here, even if she seemed unwilling to admit it to herself. He knew the kind of damage that could be done, if you didn’t pay these people the respect they demanded.
I had to hope he was talking some sense into his daughter about it all, too. Because she wasn’t going to listen to me, and I knew that he was about the only person on this planet she seemed to have any interest in hearing out.
She trusted him. She really did. And I knew she didn’t trust me, not yet. I had no idea what it was going to take for her to understand that I actually cared about her, that I really wanted her to be okay. I had already pulled her out of the mess with Roger, and I would do the same thing a million times over if that’s what it took, but she didn’t seem to give a damn one way or another. She just had it in her mind that she couldn’t believe a word that came out of my mouth, and there was no real way for me to get around that. Especially when she wouldn’t talk with me.
There was still so much I needed to take care of back in New York too, so much that I hardly even knew where to start. Mauro would be pissed as hell when he realized that I hadn’t come back from my trip to Miami, but I knew he could handle it – Kozlov seemed to be keeping his head for now, willing at least to let us set a date to talk about everything, so I didn’t have to worry about his trigger finger getting a little itchy this time around.
I knew that I had to satisfy him – had to give him something that would make him feel like he had it all in the palm of his hand. But at the same time, allowing him too much power would be a nightmare. I needed to find some way to balance it, some way to make sure that he didn’t feel the need to come out swinging for us, but at the same time, that I had everything I wanted, too.
It was making my head hurt just thinking about it. Added to the fact that he seemed to know about Nadia, and claimed to have people down here watching her, and I had some serious fucking concerns about the way this was all unfolding. I had to keep him away from her, if nothing else – had to make certain that he never got close to her. She had been through enough already. Throwing in some shit from Kozlov on top of it would just make it even worse.
And would ensure, once and for all, that she cut herself off from me. Because I knew she would blame me if something happened to her or her father at the hands of any of the people that I worked with – maybe she was right to, right to hold me to account like that. I had no idea. My head was spinning with questions, with all these people that I was trying to keep happy. But they seemed diametrically opposed to one another, impossible to handle all at once.
My phone buzzed on the counter next to me, and I reached over to check on it – it was Nadia. My heart skipped several beats in my chest as I scrambled to check her message.
“Not before noon.”
I grinned. It might not have been the warmest response in the world to my roses, but I would take anything that I could get right now, and this was everything I had been hoping for with them. I was certain that she would still be as unsure and reticent as she had been the last time I’d seen her, but at least she was willing to let me through the door now. That had to count for something, right?
Energized by the contact from the woman I couldn’t stop thinking about, I climbed out of bed and headed for a shower. Okay, what did I need to do before I left to see her again in a couple of hours? I needed to let Mauro know that I was still here, and to tell him to confirm the date of the meeting with Kozlov – I had no doubt that the Serb knew where I was right now, but I wanted to make sure that he knew I was still thinking of the deal that we were making.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he had people down here, keeping an eye on me. I hadn’t noticed anyone following me, but then, I hadn’t been paying much attention to anything else but trying to get Nadia to talk to me. Kozlov seemed like the type to keep his fingers in as many pies as possible, to keep as much focus as he could on the people around him so that he knew what they were doing at all times, who they were loyal to, which screws he could twist to get what he wanted. He was good at this, I had to give him that.
It was yet another reason I should have put effort into having him on our side. And yet... and yet, there was a part of me that still doubted him, still wanted him gone. Still wanted him as far from my life and my business as possible. He was a gangster, and he was never going to be anything else. He had made it pretty clear that he had no intention of trying to move his work towards something more legitimate, and he was happy living in this criminal underworld. Maybe because he knew he could run the show – maybe because he knew nobody would dare fight him on what he was doing.
I called Mauro once I was out of the shower, and he answered at once.
“You still in Miami?”
“I’ve got business I need to take care of here,” I replied, coolly. I wasn’t going to let him know that I had come here to take care of Nadia, I knew that he would have been furious.
“Fine,” Mauro replied, curtly. He knew better than to try and draw something out of me that I didn’t want to share with him – he clearly had other things he needed to talk to me about, more important things.
“What’s happening with the Serbs?” I asked.
“He sent a messenger down to me to confirm the date of our next meeting,” he replied. “Friday. Think you’ll have wrapped up your business in Miami by then?”
“Yes,” I replied. I knew that I was going to have Nadia back where she belonged by then – somewhere safe, somewhere I could take care of her and ensure that she was okay, that she had no reason to worry and no reason to hide.
“Good,” he shot back. “It looks like the Serbians are sticking to their guns for now. They’ve not come after any of our places again, which is a relief. No idea how long this is going to last, but they’re going to want an answer on all of this soon.”
“I know,” I replied. I was sure that Kozlov was counting down the days before he lashed out at me for not doing what he wanted, but I could handle it. I could handle whatever he threw at me. He might have thought that he was the one calling the shots here, but he had no damn idea what or who he was dealing with. Just because I was trying to get out of the darker side of this industry didn’t mean I had forgotten how it worked – and didn’t mean that I wouldn’t implement the knowledge to get what I wanted.
“Good,” Mauro replied. “I’ll send a messenger down there and tell them that we’ll be there.”
“I will be,” I promised him. I knew that he needed to hear that from me right now, that he needed to believe I was on this the way he needed me to be. And I was – I was going to deal with the Serbs and everything they were trying to throw at us. There just happened to be someone else on my mind too, someone who I wanted to take care of first.
“I’ll speak to you soon,” I promised him, and I hung up the phone. I didn’t want to think about everything that was happening back in New York right now. I wanted to focus on the here and now – and the fact that she had said that she would talk to me in a couple of hours.
I knew that she wasn’t expecting me to turn up out of the blue, but a call wouldn’t cut it. I hadn’t stayed here for another night just so I could talk to her on the phone again. I wanted to see her in person – I wanted to read the look on her face, make out every cadence in every word that she spoke, and convince her that she should come with me. Convince her that she would have been better off doing that than anything else right now, no matter how stubbornly she wanted to play this.
And... and I had to admit, the sight of her in nothing but a towel had left me with a whole lot running through my mind. How much I wanted to touch her, feel her, kiss her, hold her, everything – everything that we had denied ourselves these last couple of months, everything that I knew she must have craved as much as me.
And when we saw each other again, I got the feeling that it was going to be hard to deny ourselves that. Hard to deny how much we wanted each other – and hard to hide from the intense chemistry that was still there between us, even after all this time apart.
